


Before You Go

by bluemoodblue



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: A stop along the journey, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, after the white palace, and you just need a minute to breathe, before you face your past and your future, kingsoul feelings, sometimes you’re given a dead kingdom you didn’t want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: The road has been long and lonely, and even a ghost needs a moment to rest... perhaps with someone who has walked the road beside them.
Relationships: The Knight & The Last Stag (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Before You Go

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who got through the White Palace! And _immediately_ got smacked by feelings!
> 
> There was this moment, after I was done and back outside of the palace, looking at this completed charm with such a feeling of... weight. Like I’d done it, but what had I done? And part of me knew where I had to go next, but I also just needed a moment - so I stayed at the stag station for a while. This is the result.
> 
> (I haven’t gotten either of the next two endings yet, so no spoilers please and thank you!)

The bell still rings.

It sounds different now - just the one, a lonely sort of echo down empty passageways. The stag wonders what he expected for himself at this age, what assumption he had for the shape of his life back at the beginning of things. He can’t remember - he remembers youth, strength in his limbs and a steady clip of passengers, up and down and across in a pattern he was sure was etched into his mind forever - but the perspective of looking towards the future is all washed out by reality. Surely he hadn’t imagined this: one bell, one passenger.

And when that bell silences? He doesn’t know. Considering the future seems like a task best left to the young.

For now, though, he’s needed - he’s needed by the peculiar little creature who keeps calling him, from farther-flung locations in a pattern he cannot begin to fathom. The stag has been moving more in recent days than he has in years, and he should be tired; he should feel every step in his creaking joints. Instead, he thinks he feels more awake than he has in a very long time.

Already today he’s made the trek from King’s Station to the Resting Grounds, and from there to that distant, strange station near the palace he’d never seen before. His passenger makes the trip with a sort of fervent eagerness that the stag finds invigorating; they never speak, but the repeated jangling of the bell, their restlessness on the platform and then in their seat, the alarming speed at which they dash off through the quiet stations - all of it implies something of  _ importance _ happening. He doesn’t need to know what. It’s enough that the stag is a part of it.

The little being is still, now. When they didn’t return for a long, long time, the stag almost assumed they’d carried on to somewhere else; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d left them in one place only to be called to the Queen’s Station, or Dirtmouth, or somewhere else completely across the map. The creature moves about the kingdom as if it was their own, impressive for such a small thing. But no - hours later they wandered back, slow and sedate. For a time, they sat on the bench. And then they paced. And then, finally, they slipped down from the platform proper to the stagway itself.

The stag wondered if they wanted another story. That was a strange discovery, the first time that motionless face stood before him and pointed around them with an insistence that held meaning; the first time he’d seen something like  _ emotion _ in them, and it had occurred to him in a rush that they were so small, and probably young, and maybe they needed more than just transportation. Perhaps they could use a friend.

He’d told them what he could remember. The more he spoke, the more details came back to him, and the little one would sit on the packed dirt of the stagway in front of him, still with what might be unnerving blankness to others, but what to the stag always felt like rapt attention. If they never spoke, they listened very well.

They don’t approach him today. Instead, they sit unsteadily against the wall at the edge of the stagway, staring down at something white and shining in their grasp. The stag inches closer to see, and they don’t shy away from him - instead they hold the object out, so he can take a better look at it.

It’s a charm. He doesn’t know much about charms, just what he can observe through the people wearing them - like the being before him, who’s taken to carrying around long strings of the shining, ornate discs. Anything from clouds of spores to swarms of smaller bugs to an unfortunate odor might follow a change in that pattern; once he was pursued by some flying, hissing creature the long way around a tunnel until he realized it wasn’t chasing him but trying desperately to keep up with his passenger. He’s no expert, so he isn’t sure if it’s his own inexperience that has him thinking it’s… strange.

It glows, for one thing. There is an aura about it that casts a gentle light on them both, stretching strange shadows across their faces, and it doesn’t seem to reflect from any of the gentle lamps around them. It glows, perhaps by function, perhaps by a power it can only just contain. It’s shaped like a face, empty eyes staring out, and the stag feels - seen.

“Is it meant to hold something?” It’s the emptiness of the eyes, he thinks, an implied hollowness in the construction. He doesn’t know why he feels the need to ask; his little friend never shares much. They shrug, and the gesture feels sincere; it isn’t reassuring, somehow, that they seem as unsure as he is. “Is it very heavy?” The string of charms is shorter than it’s been in a long time. The being looks at the charm for a while, and then nods. 

And, because they seem receptive so far, the stag asks one more question. “What is it for?”

The little being looks with still, empty eyes into equally still, empty eyes. But that doesn’t feel fair - the little being’s eyes haven’t looked truly empty since they met. They didn’t look empty since the first time he came careening down the Forgotten Crossroad stagway, hope in his heart that he really heard the bell again and it wasn’t just foolish dreaming, to encounter a tiny creature braced for impact… who reached up with a cracked nail to ring the bell again in the only greeting they could manage. Expressionless, perhaps, but never empty - never that. After consideration, they point up to the sign listing the stagways, to the one added at the bottom only recently in a childish, hieroglyphic scrawl - the Stag Nest.

“To take you home?” A strange thought, the sudden idea that there is pain in their hesitation. They shake their head, and the stag thinks. “To take you… to a beginning?” They nod. He cannot escape the idea that they hurt, as much as he doesn’t want to assume the things the being cannot say. The stag asks the most important question. “May I come with you?”

It was asked of him, not very long ago - in happier circumstances, when he confided in his friend that he had found his home, abandoned as it was. It had been easy enough then to see the being point to themself with a tilt of their head and know what they meant; it had been easy enough to bring them, to take in the way they looked at the nest like it was a wonder to them.

All of them shakes, just a little. They put down the charm and hold up those small arms, and the stag leans his face in closer so they can hold on. The answer is no, for reasons the being can’t say. The answer is no, and not because they want to go alone. He isn’t sure this little one has ever wanted to go alone - but who did they have to go with them?

“Then I will wait for the bell. But I hope you will remember a piece of wisdom I have learned in my long life - whatever road takes you onward can take you back again.”

The stag lets that tiny creature hold onto him as long as they need to, shuddering with all of the emotions they can’t show on their face, and hopes this is enough to carry into the dark - into whatever future waits for children in a lost kingdom.


End file.
